title: The silent burden of anemia in school age children: a community based study in West Bengal.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Under nutrition and anemia are common co-morbidities in school age children. Due to transition in dietary habits in developing countries, a paradoxical finding of coexistence of anemia and normal/over nutrition is also a cause of concern.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  > T o assess the nutritional status and prevalence of anemia among school age children (6 - 16 years) residing in rural and urban areas of a district of West Bengal and also to find out the association between weight status, measured as Body Mass Index(BMI) and anemia.
  
  
  METHODS
  Age, height & weight were measured in 86 rural and 86 urban school age (6 -16 years) children in rural and urban field practice areas of Midnapore Medical College. Their blood was estimated for haemoglobin concentration.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Overall prevalence of anemia was 80.2%, and not significantly different between the rural (83.7%) and urban (76.7%) participants and across the genders both in rural (86.4% versus 80.9%) and urban (85.7% versus 72.4%) areas. Thinness was observed to be higher in urban area (48.8% versus 41.9%). However, severe thinness was higher in rural area (18.5% versus 13.9%). Significantly, higher proportion of boys revealed severely low BMI compared to girls in both rural (33.3% versus 4.5%) and urban (17.2% versus 7.1%) areas with no significant differences between the prevalence of anemia across the grades of underweight and normal nutritional status.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Poor nutritional status and anemia are still, taking heavy toll and new program strategies are needed, particularly those that improve the overall nutrition status of children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine and Sagar Datta Hospital, Kamarhati, India. guptasomarusa@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Soma
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.forename: Pranita
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Taraphdar
authors.forename: Tapobrata Guha
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Roy
authors.forename: Dibakar
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Haldar
authors.forename: Sujit Kumar
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Dey
authors.forename: Bulbul
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Purkait
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000740:Anemia / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015992:Body Mass Index; D002648:Child; D015897:Comorbidity; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D009752:Nutritional Status; D015995:Prevalence; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*